"I do not understand," replied Paul, angrily, "how you can court all these people; they are the most worn out coinage which can have no circulation amongst us. Let us sit down here at this table behind the stove, there we shall at least not see these bald heads, which only by an oversight, or by the magic wand of some mischievous Demiurgos, were thrown amongst human beings. Well your communication--" "It could be foreseen, Olga has engaged herself to Herr von Wegen." Kuhl struck the table with his hand. "Then may the weather--that Wegen! I always had an antipathy for the man; he belongs to those who would play with dice, and cannot count, and with the most innocent face he gets up one affair after another. First he proposes to you, then to Olga--I feel as if I saw my face in a distorting mirror, like a ridiculous caricature." "No one will blame his conduct!" "That is it! People may dare much for love! Only a little time must elapse between--time! That is the meaning of all wisdom, and yet that old maid who paints our wrinkles upon us makes everything worse! Whether to-day I love two girls at once, or to-day the one, and to-morrow the other, is really no very great difference! And yet the first is accounted a sin, and the other is most correct. Always the goose-step in life and love, and so one walks most comfortably through the world." "You see, though, how kindly they greet Olga and thrust me aside." "Olga--she has put a crown upon her faithlessness to our alliance, now it is broken! I did not think her so calculating." "Calculating? She loves Wegen!" "It is not possible!" "Why? He is honest, and a gentleman!" "Did you perhaps love him too?" "And if I had done so? bountiful natures must find an outlet!" "You are making fun of me! Verily any one who will uphold a sensible principle in a ridiculous world, must at least appear like a Don Quixote, even to himself; at least, they all look upon his helmet as a barber's goblet. I am weary of carrying on this impossible struggle with want of sense." Cäcilie did not interrupt the monologue, but beat upon the table with her fingers, and looked inquiringly at his face with her cunning sparkling eyes. "I took Olga's to be a nature," continued Kuhl, "which, following an unknown impulse, grasps the right one. We need such natures which do not trouble themselves at all about the rules of society, which pass no sleepless nights in consequence. For me she was refreshing, because for the mentally intoxicated, and those who are tired of roving, who wander through heaven and earth, there is no better refreshment than a richly endowed material nature; for me she was a triumph because she showed me that not natural feeling, but only the falsity of society demanded exclusive possession." Cäcilie cast down her eyes and said timidly, "I did not know that Olga was so much to you! "Not she alone, you both together, you complete one another in a harmonious picture of perfect womanhood."